A Life Worth Nothing

IN his eyes, she was akin to a porcelain doll, a catwalk model who had somehow veered into the wrong industry.

He was glad to have volunteered to cover for his senior technician who called in sick earlier. No one else had raised their hands on replacing the old has-been on his appointed duties, so he guessed it had to be him. At barely two weeks of being employed, he knew too he was the most junior and as such more susceptible to such last-minute replacement stints.

He knew from the buzz around the company's café the Kejoria Complex task wasn't something anyone of them wanted. It wasn't the location. The building housing Radian Berhad's data collecting tech was only a mile or so inside what was admittedly an urban jungle. Nope. From what he had gathered from his seniors, their consternation was the mundanity of the task involved. They were doing nothing more than transferring data from half a dozen hard drives into discs.

And of course, the manual task wasn't something the glamorous scientist types from Radian was up for. His senior spoke of working alongside a petite young woman sporting a boyish haircut, looking like she's just graduated from college. She would sit solo at the main console as the transfer was being done.

He was intrigued when he heard about her. His curiosity increasing when the older man said she wasn't his type. And how she freaked him out the one time he braved the solitude to walk up to her to say hello.

"Those eyes looked like they could see through you. Knows what is in your heart. I said nothing after that. Just minded my own business no matter how bored I was."

Those words rang false in his mind when he saw the lanky goddess who walked into the building some ten minutes after he arrived. From his supervisor's briefing, their task was simple as hell. Go to the complex. Clock in. Wait for the Radian people to arrive to unlock the server room. Download the data one hard drive at a time for transfer. Wait, wait, and wait some more. Task complete when the system resets for another week of data collecting.

The waiting was what his senior hated the most.

He reckoned it was because the old man was paired with the wrong personnel from Radian. He was luckier. His eyes were locked on her and nothing else the moment she walked in. Standing taller than him, she had taken off her jacket after a few minutes within the server room, revealing a svelte form wrapped beneath a pristine white blouse. He swore he could spy the black bra she wore underneath. And the places where sweat caused the soft material of her dress to stick to her skin, he could almost imagine how fair and smooth she was. After a while, there were more spots of sweat and skin intermixing. The central air condition cooling the building was in severe need of repairs. Place was simply baking inside. But he again thanked his lucky stars as his breath became more labored and something within him had stirred.

She had acknowledged his presence with a nod. Not a smile. Just a single, short nod. She, too, wore her hair short just above the neckline. A neck no thicker than his arms. His eyes lingered over her figure. Admiring from not that far away, and she didn't seem to mind. Her legs seemed to stretch forever, clothed in dark brown pants ending with stilettos. He loved woman who wore shoes with heels. To him, heels accentuate the gorgeous silhouette of a woman, something flats would be found wanting. His senior mentioned the other often wore a skirt that swoosh about as she moved around the small building. Seemed to be without much grace to him, unlike the woman he was blessed to be with.

She had let out a cough to attract him, followed by a nudging of those masculine-cut jaws towards the rows of CPUs lined alongside a corridor within the room. He remembered again why he was there and set about executing the task. Cherishing the waiting.

He had started the downloading process from the second hard drive when he heard her uttering an almost inaudible curse from those soft lips. He wondered why, guessing it had something to do with the programming since she was standing before the main console. A wall mounted screen reflected her image even as a swath of encryptions scrolled on its flat surface, bluish-green characters on dark grey background. He saw her taking out a cell phone from inside her jacket and then the frown forming on her face. She headed towards a solitary phone, also wall mounted. Lifted it to her ears, and keyed in a set of numbers in quick succession. Waited. Just like him. Albeit only a short while.

"Hi, Doctor. Yeah, it's me. Where's Syafa?"

He saw her agitated as she listened to the person at the other end.

"Can you have her call me at the complex? Yeah. The codes aren't making any sense. Yeah. Sure. I'll do that."

She replaced the phone and made her way back to the computer. Stood before the screen, her fingers on the keyboard. Silence descended the complex as they both stood watching. Him, her, and her, the scrolling digital text. He realized then her eyes were not on the screen but at a point in the air, midway between her and the screen. She had dropped her head, chin nearly touching the bridge of her neck while her fingers started to move on the keyboard. Minutes passed as his jaw ached from being opened.

She's in trance. Beautiful!

He saw her fingers were the only limbs moving as the rest of her was frozen statuesque solid. His own breath quickened even more as he moved closer, eyes caressing her impossibly curvy figure. He imagined her to be as luscious as those forever begging for sweet release from hunks whose career in the entertainment industry was helped by the size of their genitals. Women who goaded him on in his own short spurt of pleasure as he pictures them in his mind doing whatever the hell he wanted them to do.

He felt his lust build up, and a silent urging, an uncomfortable flush of blood rushing to his groin. His eyes wandered to her breasts, imagines the nipples hard, yet supple beneath his fingers. Imagines his tongue salivating over them even as his strong hands pummeled them. Sweet, flat dough. He had so much pleasure with the young ones and this time, oh yes, this time, it's the real deal. Licking his lips, his eyes swept across the building.

No one will know. Remember. Hands over their mouths and you won't hear their screams. None. No words. Only yours.

He stood up, hands shaking slightly in anticipation. Took another step towards her.

Oh no you won't.

What?

The lights had suddenly gone out, placing him in pitch darkness where he could only see himself. Hanging in mid-air, his feet dangling in empty space.

Wait a second. Where's the room? Where the hell am I?

That's an apt description.

He felt a nibbling sensation in his limbs and saw the darkness inching up from his toes and fingertips. Darkness that pressed his body from all directions. They entered his nostrils and stretched every crevice inside him. Pushing and pulling him apart.

No screams. No words. Nothing from you, sonofabitch. See how it was for them.

His eyes could still see. He saw his body ravaged at miniscule pace. The pitch darkness claiming every inch as its own.

No more. Damn me if I allow you to live.

Last words he registered as the darkness engulfed his very being with the last visage of light snuffed away.

****

"Did I just doze off?"

Bernice Chan stared at the wall mounted monitor facing her and realized while the reprogramming of the grid had been completed, the data transfer wasn't. Stuck at the second disk. She felt a stiffness in her limbs as she straightened herself from what seemed a prolonged stooping position. Wondered how she had managed the input the codes she never could pass muster to write a single line of during drills.

She's still incensed Dr Saari had the cheek to drop the assignment on her lap from out of the blue. Right before lunch the lanky, good-looking Department head walked up to her with a smile. Fake, forced. She knew immediately there was something he wanted done then and there. He didn't have to say anything as the penny dropped when she remembered what day it was. The Kejoria complex weekly data rollover. She had frown at him. It was usually handled by her younger colleague, Syafa Ainur, whom she knew loved the job.

Four years her junior, Syafa had the mindset enabling her to conjure codes like other would in stringing sentences. Every Wednesday since she was tasked with the responsibility, the young woman from Penang would be gone in a whiff. The rest of the team didn't want the job. It needed them to interact with the whole network and insert the correct programming lines to address ever changing syntaxes. Syafa was the only who was brazen and gung-ho enough to do it without tech support.

Bernice admired her for that, but at the same time disapproved of her open flirting with Dr Saari. Daily breakfast and lunch dates together. Little touches between Syafa and the much older man which Bernice caught. The whole department knew he was a married man. What she doesn't know was whether the little nugget of fact mattered to the feisty Syafa.

Where did the technician go?

Bernice logged herself out from the server. Her ID wasn't required in the data transfer although she needed the downloading process to start before enabling the alteration in the matrix of the collection grids. Why it cannot be automatically done eludes her. She didn't care about this gap before since Syafa had the responsibility handled well enough. Now that she's tasked with it, she wondered about Dr Saari's lack of push for the budgetary allocations and personnel to automate something looking thoroughly doable. Shaking her head at the thought, Bernice turned away from the console.

The technician's silhouette startled her. He stood with his back to the door. The sunlight entering the small building through thinly glazed door had darkened his features. Too soft, the downlights within didn't help accentuate them either. He seemed to be staring at her, Bernice thought. She shivered slightly at the stillness of the man's frame.

"Excuse me but what are you doing?"

No answer. The man was like a statue. Bernice braved herself and walked over to the young technician from the company contracted to assist in the data transfer process. She understood why Radian didn't employ someone full time to undertake the task. After all, being idle except for a day every week isn't economical. And there were rumors of direction coming from the powers that be for jobs creation. After all, Radian was partly funded by the government.

A gasp left her lips as Bernice went closer to the man wearing a company-issued navy-blue shirt. His eyes were vacant, staring at where she had been. Drool flowed from a partially open mouth. Her eyes snaked to the man's arm and disgust replaced concerned. Saw his left hand stuck at the groin area, as though massaging the member underneath. It freaked her out that he still didn't move despite their proximity. She realized then he wasn't breathing.

She jabbed his left chest with three fingers from her right hand and let out a sudden yelp as the man fell ramrod onto the cold floor of the complex. Bernice jumped backwards as the man hit the mezzanine with a thud.

God in heaven!

She staggered back towards the console, her arms flailing to find somewhere to rest and finding the chair. As she sat down, Bernice fished her phone out. Still no signal. She steadied herself and went again to the phone at the wall.

"Dr Saari? Help… Please. No... I… I'm still at Kejoria. The technician. I think he's dead… No, I didn't check. Please."

Replacing the phone, she cupped her mouth as a bile threatens to exit from somewhere inside her. She rose, knees feeling like jelly as she began a slow walk which turned into a trot to burst out from the room. The cool air outside embraced Bernice as she stooped down, succumbing to the bile she had felt building up and retched into the drain outside of the building.